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Freedom251 › Blog › Agent System of Record

How to Set Permissions and Audit AI Agents Accessing Workday (2026 Guide)

By Freedom251 Team · · 12 min read

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Set up Workday AI agents in two layers: first control who can invoke a skill, then control what the skill’s tools and APIs can do. Use Agent System of Record (ASOR) to register and activate the agent, View Security for Agent Skill to identify required policies, and View AI Agent User Audit Trail to verify each action. Delegate agents inherit the invoking person’s access; ambient agents act through their own Agent System User (ASU) and security group.

The safest sequence is to establish ASOR administration, configure the agent and its skills, grant only the permissions identified by the skill-security report, activate the agent, and then review audit attribution according to the execution mode. Tenant entitlements, enabled skills, policy names and report scope vary, so verify them in the target tenant before changing production access.

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Understand Workday’s two AI-agent execution modes

Permission design starts with the execution mode. Workday treats a user-invoked delegate action differently from a background ambient action, and the difference changes both authorization and audit interpretation.

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Delegate execution

A delegate skill runs on behalf of a person who initiates the interaction. Workday evaluates the person’s access together with the permissions allowed to the skill’s tools and APIs. The person must be allowed to invoke the skill through its interaction policy, and the person’s security groups must also authorize the underlying operation.

In the audit trail, the agent appears in By User and the human appears in On Behalf Of User. This lets an investigator distinguish the technical actor from the person who requested the work.

Ambient execution

An ambient skill runs without an interacting user, typically because a schedule or event started it. The agent authenticates as its own ASU and is authorized through an automatically generated Ambient Agent Security Group. That group must receive the domain, business-process or integration permissions required by the skill’s tools.

For an ambient action, the agent ASU is shown as By User; there is no human On Behalf Of User to interpret. Granting the ambient group broad employee or administrator access defeats the purpose of a separate machine identity, so map each permission to an actual tool requirement.

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Decision axis Delegate Ambient
Typical pattern Interactive task initiated for a person Background task started by an event or schedule
Identity Human user plus agent ASU Agent ASU alone
Authorization basis Intersection of the user’s access and the agent’s allowed skills and tools Permissions assigned to the agent’s ambient security group
Main configuration Agent interaction policy, including Available To, plus tool and API policies Generated Ambient Agent Security Group plus relevant domain and business-process policies
Audit reading Agent as By User; requesting person as On Behalf Of User Agent ASU as By User
OAuth detail documented by Workday On-Behalf-Of flow; token lifetime depends on agent category and grant Authentication as the ambient ASU

Prerequisites and tenant checks

Complete these checks before editing security. Workday’s administrator documentation says ASOR setup is required separately in each tenant and that ASOR configurations currently cannot be migrated. A configuration tested in a sandbox therefore does not automatically appear in production.

  • Confirm that the target tenant has the Agent System of Record functional area enabled.
  • Confirm that the organization’s Workday subscription includes the agent and skills you intend to register. Registration is limited to agents in acquired SKUs, and some agents are outside ASOR.
  • Identify the tenant’s current security-policy activation state and the administrator group that is permitted to make unconstrained security changes.
  • Confirm that the intended APIs, integrations and business processes are enabled. A skill may require access that is not present in the default tenant configuration.
  • Plan a separate change for production. Do not assume that a sandbox refresh, transport or migration carries ASOR configuration with it.

Product behavior, task names, entitlements, report coverage and OAuth details can change. Workday’s administrator material used for this guide was current on October 13, 2026; use the labels and policy details displayed by your tenant when they differ.

Establish administration access for Agent System of Record

ASOR controls the agent lifecycle and configuration, but its own security must be configured first. Workday’s setup procedure uses an unconstrained administrator group for these policies.

  1. Enable the functional area. In the tenant’s setup area, enable Agent System of Record.
  2. Enable ASOR domain policies. Enable the security policies for the ASOR-related domains, including Agent Compliance, Agent Management Hub, Manage: Agents, Reports: Agent Reporting, Reports: AI Agent Security and Setup: Agents.
  3. Enable the reporting domain. Make sure the Reports: AI Agent Security domain is enabled; otherwise the skill-security and audit reports may not be available to the administrators who need them.
  4. Assign permissions. Open Maintain Permissions for Security Group and assign the required View and Modify access to the appropriate unconstrained administrator group. ASOR security policies currently support only unconstrained groups, according to Workday’s setup guidance.
  5. Activate pending changes. After editing security policies, activate the pending security-policy changes before testing the agent. A policy that is merely saved but not activated will not provide the expected runtime access.

Separate the administrator group that can configure agents from the groups that will invoke delegate skills. Configuration authority is not a reason to make every end user an ASOR administrator.

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Register and configure the agent

For Workday-built agents covered by ASOR, the documented flow is performed in Agent Management Hub.

  1. Register the eligible agent. In Agent Management Hub, register the agent available to your tenant and subscription. If the agent is not listed, verify entitlement and whether that product is managed outside ASOR rather than trying to bypass the registration control.
  2. Configure the agent. Enter the configuration required by the selected agent, including any integration or business context requested by the tenant UI.
  3. Enable only required skills. Select the skills the business process actually needs. Each enabled skill expands the agent’s possible activity and should be reviewed independently.
  4. Set the interaction policy. For each delegate skill, populate its Available To field with only the user or security groups permitted to invoke that skill.
  5. Review generated identities. Workday generates ASU accounts and OAuth clients during configuration or skill enablement. Distinct ASUs can be created for delegate and ambient execution. The ASU is enabled when the agent is activated.
  6. Activate the agent. Activation turns on the configured skills and activates the associated ASU. Record the activation change and the approving administrator in your change-management system.

Some agents are not administered through ASOR. For those, use the product’s documented identity and security controls, but do not assume that ASOR reports or ASOR-generated groups exist.

Map each skill to the permissions its tools require

“Who may use this skill?” and “What may the skill do?” are separate security questions. The Available To interaction setting answers the first one for a delegate skill. Domain, business-process and integration policies answer the second one for both delegate and ambient execution.

Use View Security for Agent Skill

Open View Security for Agent Skill for the configured skill. The report identifies the tools and APIs used by the skill and associates them with the domain or business-process security policies and permissions that control execution. Treat this report as a permission map, not as proof that an action has occurred.

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For every listed operation, record:

  • The skill and tool name.
  • The associated domain or business process.
  • The required permission level, such as View, Modify, Get or Put.
  • The security group that will receive the permission.
  • Whether the operation is read-only, changes Workday data or invokes an external integration.

Exact policy names and minimum levels depend on the skill, tenant configuration and enabled integrations. If the report does not identify a permission, do not guess; inspect the referenced policy and test with the least privilege that satisfies the operation.

Configure delegate permissions

  1. Place only intended users in the skill’s Available To group.
  2. Use View Security for Agent Skill to identify every tool and API the skill can call.
  3. Ensure the eligible users belong to security groups authorized by those API, domain and business-process policies.
  4. Activate pending policy changes.
  5. Test with a representative user who should succeed and a nearby user who should be denied.

The Available To group and the groups authorized by API policies do not have to be identical. Runtime success requires both conditions: the user must be allowed to invoke the skill and must have the underlying tool access. A user who can see the skill but lacks the API permission should receive a controlled authorization failure rather than a broad permission grant.

Configure ambient permissions

  1. Enable or activate the ambient skill so Workday creates its unique Ambient Agent Security Group.
  2. Run View Security for Agent Skill and list the domains, business processes and integrations required by the enabled tools.
  3. Assign the ambient group only the permissions required for those operations. Use View or Modify according to the tool’s stated need; where an integration policy is listed, the report may identify Get or Put access.
  4. Activate the pending security-policy changes.
  5. Trigger a controlled run and verify that the audit record attributes the action to the agent ASU.

Do not assign the ambient group to a general-purpose employee group, and do not copy an administrator group merely because it makes an initial test pass. Investigate each denied operation against the policy named by the skill-security report.

Apply least privilege without breaking the workflow

Least privilege is practical when permissions are mapped to individual tools instead of granted to the agent as a whole. Start with read access, add a write permission only when the business outcome requires it, and keep unrelated domains out of the group.

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  • Separate read and write paths. A skill that searches worker data may need View or Get access but not Modify or Put access.
  • Limit invocation. A delegate skill can be restricted to a role, region or project group through Available To without changing the API policy for other users.
  • Use distinct identities. Keep delegate and ambient ASUs separate so audit records and revocation decisions remain clear.
  • Test denials deliberately. A denied test confirms that the boundary works; it is not evidence that the agent is malfunctioning.
  • Review after every skill change. Enabling a new skill can add tools and therefore new policy requirements.

Audit agent activity in Workday

Review the AI-agent audit trail

Use View AI Agent User Audit Trail either from an agent’s related actions or as a standalone task. Review the event time, agent identity, action and attribution fields. For delegate execution, read By User as the agent identity and On Behalf Of User as the human who initiated the work. For ambient execution, the agent ASU appears as By User because no human user is involved in the run.

When investigating an unexpected change, begin with the ASU in By User, then determine whether the event was delegate or ambient, identify the requesting person when present, and compare the action with the skill’s enabled tools. This prevents an investigator from treating the human requester as the technical identity or treating every ASU event as a background process.

Review configuration separately from activity

View Security for Agent Skill shows what the configured tools are allowed to call. It does not replace the activity audit trail. Use the two reports together: the skill report establishes the intended authorization surface, while the audit trail shows what the agent actually attempted or completed.

Check input and output where supported

Workday documents Agent Input and Output report options for Workday-built agents. Agent Input and Output Details covers the previous 30 days. Do not assume these reports cover registered third-party agents or provide unlimited historical retention. If a longer investigation window is required, use the retention and export controls available in the tenant’s broader audit program rather than inferring coverage from this report.

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Inspect Agent Passport assurance data

For agents with passport data, open the Agent Passport tab. It displays security stamps, their descriptions, assessors and the date each stamp was granted. A stamp is assurance information about the agent; it does not replace a review of the tenant’s current groups, policies, enabled tools or audit events.

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Build a recurring review routine

Workday recommends regular examination of audit logs. A useful review cadence combines access review, configuration review and activity review rather than checking only whether an agent is still active.

  1. At activation: Save the skill list, Available To groups, generated ASU names and the permissions identified by View Security for Agent Skill.
  2. After a change: Re-run the skill-security report whenever a skill, tool, integration or business process changes, and record newly required policies.
  3. During routine review: Examine recent events in View AI Agent User Audit Trail, focusing on new ASUs, unusual users, write operations and failures.
  4. At access recertification: Remove users who no longer need Available To access and remove unused permissions from ambient groups.
  5. After an incident: Disable the agent or revoke the relevant group and OAuth client according to the tenant’s response procedure, preserve the audit evidence, then investigate the triggering skill and policy.

Workday documentation states that usage activities from previous weeks are not deleted during a Sandbox refresh. Treat that as a specific statement about those activities, not as a general guarantee of retention for every report, tenant or environment.

OAuth and token-lifetime considerations

Workday documents an OAuth On-Behalf-Of flow for delegate agents. For first-party agents using the Authorization Code grant, access tokens are documented as valid for up to 60 minutes. For third-party agents, the documented lifetime is four hours and is not currently customizable. These are product details that can change, so verify the current tenant documentation before designing token refresh, job scheduling or incident-revocation procedures.

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Token lifetime is not a substitute for Workday authorization. A valid token still cannot perform an operation that the invoking user, agent skill or applicable security policy does not allow. When a token is revoked or expires, review both the OAuth configuration and the underlying Workday security policies before increasing permissions.

Troubleshoot common permission and audit failures

The agent cannot be registered

Check the tenant’s SKU entitlement and whether the agent is one of the products managed by ASOR. Some agents are outside ASOR, and an absent registration option is not fixed by granting more security to an end user.

The skill is visible but a delegate action is denied

Check both gates: the user’s membership in the skill’s Available To group and the user’s membership in the security groups authorized for the tool or API. Then confirm that pending policy changes were activated.

An ambient run fails after activation

Open View Security for Agent Skill and compare every listed domain, business process and integration permission with the Ambient Agent Security Group. Add only the missing permission level, activate the policy, and rerun a controlled test.

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The audit trail appears to name the wrong person

Read the fields according to execution mode. In delegate mode, By User is the agent and On Behalf Of User is the human requester. In ambient mode, the agent ASU is By User and no human requester is expected.

Input or output details are missing

Confirm that the agent is Workday-built and that the requested event falls within the documented 30-day scope of Agent Input and Output Details. Registered third-party agents and older events may not be covered.

Security changes appear ineffective

Verify that the policy activation completed, that you edited the correct tenant, and that the user or ambient group actually received the policy. ASOR configuration is tenant-specific and cannot currently be migrated, so a change in one environment does not prove that another environment has it.

Administrator checklist

  • Target tenant and entitlement verified.
  • ASOR functional area and required domains enabled.
  • Unconstrained administrator group has the necessary View and Modify access.
  • Pending security-policy changes activated.
  • Agent registered and only required skills enabled.
  • Delegate Available To groups restricted to intended users.
  • Ambient Agent Security Group identified and narrowly permissioned.
  • View Security for Agent Skill reviewed for every enabled skill.
  • ASU and OAuth identities recorded.
  • Delegate and ambient test cases completed, including a denied case.
  • View AI Agent User Audit Trail reviewed with correct attribution.
  • Input/output report scope and Agent Passport information checked where applicable.
  • Recurring access and audit review owner assigned.

Source note and scope

Workday describes its approach in the administrator documentation Concept: Agent Security, Setup Considerations: Agent Security, About Workday Agents, Set Up Agent System of Record, Configure Security Policies for Agent Skills, Register and Configure Workday-Built Agents and View Agent Passport Security for Agents. The central principle is that “Agent Security ensures that AI agents operate securely within your enterprise by assigning them unique identities, robust authentication, and granular authorization controls.” Exact labels, available reports and required permission levels remain tenant- and version-dependent.

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Agent System of RecordAI agentsIdentity and Access Managementleast privilegeSecurity AuditingWorkday

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